Internalised misogyny examples please

Haha, we recognise our own 😆

It's very easy (ime) to get tangle up in 'shoulds' and 'oughts' that are (mostly) correct in theory, but that - when it comes to real world application - require a relaxing of one's internal principles and 'rules', or are more nuanced than they may appear.

The '90s was big on a sort of feminist attitude that could end up sliding into sexism, where anything girly was automatically bad and inferior (whether it was or not) and everything 'for boys' was superior and to be lauded. Girls (especially autistic girls) trying to get away from restrictive sex norms that they chafed under often went to extremes, and threw the baby out with the bathwater.

A lot of femininity deserves critical examination, and is wielded as a patriarchal tool, imo...but that doesn't mean that it's all bad in any blanket sense. And it doesn't mean masculinity is somehow superior, either.

@ISaySteadyOn
We’re aboit the same age, then.
Do you think what you thought feminism came more/mostly from (starting) online boards, from general view from (possibly anti-feminist) media and/or people? Or did you spend time in some of the many feminist spaces, real-life or online?

I know I got a scary image of feminists in two way: just general attitude/the way people spoke of feminism (the usual ugly women who hate men and young/beautiful women because they are single and childless (this should have been a clue, but I wasn’t that bright, LOL) and then from short snippets of online comments from women that said more or less the ’women are strong and smart and don’t need men’.

and those to attitudes build in my head kind of scary but also kick ass view on feminist. And then when I started spend more time on feminist spaces, online mostly, it was pretty underwhelmed tbh. Not to be rude to anyone. But I was expecting something more, turns out it’s just everay women living very everyday lives. I’m not best at explaining, so this isin’t meant to be insulting to anyone, just trying to explain how I also had (a little different from ISAYSTEADYON but also pretty black and white view) a very different understanding of what feminists are like.

Rambling now, sorry.

Super sorry about all the typos, I can’t edit them!

Women who think power is a bad word and want to have nothing to do with it, hence condemning themselves to the background
Same for money

Women who don’t believe in women as a sex class and still believe we can be « people » with men

I totally hear you.

I grew up thinking to be 'girly' was the worst thing to be.

I don't know why - my mum is a strong woman and she and my dad have a pretty egalitarian marriage (tangent: mum was raised to expect this. In the 1960s, her dad was involved in the child rearing and housework. The other men were all down the pub. Top bloke my grandad).

I think its the subtle drip drip of 'women are worse' that we get from society.

Maybe it wasn't helped by all the old kids classics like famous 5 that I used to read, where girls were either wet and a bit useless, or competent but wanted to be a boy.i was an avid reader. Also Brownie and guides activities used to be very 'feminine coded' back in the day and I desperately wanted to be a scout instead because they did cool stuff like night hikes.

I remember telling my mum that I wasn't like most girls because I didn't like sewing and 'girl stuff'. She told me she didn't think many girls actually were like that, it was how they were forced to be 'in the old days'.

I forced myself to take maths and physics A level, despite hating it 🤦‍♂️ because I wanted to prove I could do 'boys subjects'.

It wasn't until my 30s, I think, that I realised there is nothing wrong with feminine coded things.

I think this is definitely a type of internalised misogyny.

Which is why fuck off is the only reasonable response. It is not naive to understand how the world works and reject it. If I unconsciously internalised (as you call it) anything, it was that the rules were written by men and they weren't to the benefit of women. Just pick up e.g. a bible as a child and you understand that.

I can recall discussions I had as a little girl about the illogicality of male superiority. I stand by my view, which has not changed even into my ninth decade, that if, as a woman, you "internalise" female inferiority or accept as "normal" female roles dictated by society you lack self esteem. You must, to put yourself and your whole sex down for no logical reason.

I think you could be missing the point. Its a lot more subtle than that. I don't think many women sit around consciously thinking 'women are worse than men'; its a lot more subtle and unconscious than that.

Influence is a thing. That's why there is s multi million pound advertising agency. But nobody buys something just because they saw one ad - its more subtle than that.

Its about the unconscious messages we don't even know we've absorbed.

I see it as another way women have learned to survive in the patriarchy. Accept it, capitulate, be the good girl and good wife. Consider it a man's world and accept your role as the supporting act. Hope that men appreciate what you do, seek their approval, and if they behave badly, blame the other woman or laugh it off with a 'boys will be boys shrug'. That's the model I saw growing up. I hated it and still do. But I understand why it's there.

Penis portions are another one - especially amongst certain generations of women. Not even just expecting that men will generally choose to eat a bit more, based on having larger bodies, but actively denying food to women and shaming them for wanting any more than a picky toddler would eat.

Serving up a huge plateful to the men, whilst giving women a tenth as much - often whilst commenting about 'wanting to watch your figure' or similar. And not even going back a few generations further, where nothing was even plated up; the men were given full and exclusive access to all of the food and IF there was anything left that they didn't fancy or just couldn't stuff in... well weren't the women and girls lucky, eh?!

It was because the men were the ones who had to go out to work to provide for the family, you see, so they needed to be big and strong and full of energy. Women didn't do anything remotely energetic or of any importance to the family, so whether they got anything to eat or not was pretty arbitrary and irrelevant...

I've never understood how something can supposedly be disgusting, a sign of depression or make you look ill when one sex does/doesn't do it, but it's not even expected that the other sex might ever do it at all.

Yes, if you go for a month without showering or smear your poo over the walls for fun, that IS clearly disgusting, whichever sex you are; but when it comes to personal free choices such as shaving/not shaving hair or wearing/not wearing makeup, it's deranged... and it is indeed internalised misgyny. Also the ridiculous 'it's not professional' claims: if a male office worker has five identical shirts and pairs of trousers and dresses exactly the same every day, nobody even notices; but if a woman wore the exact same (clean) identical outfit every day, she would likely be taken to task for it.

I must politely disagree. I am a boringly average woman. Yet I have never accepted these messages relating to women's roles, society's expectations etc. I have never complied with these messages, maybe because my interests, my work, my hobbies etc. have always been those more usually associated with men and finding myself on the "wrong" side of expected roles has probably toughened me up.

I've always seen "no" as a complete sentence. I dunno: maybe I am an just an oddball and there is indeed something within many women's natures that draws them to be compliant and absorb society's subtle messages or e.g.marketing shit. Or maybe after sixty years in the communications business I recognise even subtle manipulation more easily.

Whatever.

I was accused of internalised mysogeny
i reflected
I had generalised but at the same time - it was a direct result of girls and young women bullying me for not being girly and feminine enough. I understand a young girl will start to avoid relationships with women after a decade or more of abuse perpetuated by women and girls. The boys / young men were more prepared to take me as I was. It was the the women trying to enforce the patriarchal norms more rigorously than men.

So- there's a society where for a long time, group A are dominant. Group B are tolerated if they get with the project and don't make trouble, but are at risk of disapproval or punishment if not.

Group A dominance is in the interests of group A members. So if you're an A, you don't need to actively signal loyalty to group A; it will be assumed unless you demonstrate otherwise. You can even behave quite nicely to Bs.

Group B, though, are always more or less suspected of not really being on side, or else they're just not thought about at all.

If you're a B and disinclined to be a rebel, are afraid of being suspected, or want more than crumbs from the A table, signalling loyalty to A is an obvious strategy. One way to do it is to jump on any B who steps out of line.

Doing that is also the only power- game available to a B who likes power, other than learning to manage and dominate a malleable A, which is trickier. (Assuming there are no C's even lower in the pecking order.)

All this applies in many other situations besides the relations of men and women, and has to do with power dynamics, rather than inborn characteristics.

On one level a funny example. On most other levels cosmically depressing.

Androg[yn]ous Spacecraft docking because neither the US or Russia wanted to be the "Female" docking part.

Dont be like the other girls.

I wonder what would happen if they called the respective components "mother" (larger, embracing) and "child" ( smaller, embraced) instead?

One example you see on here all the time is that working mothers are apparently working for frivolous luxuries whereas working fathers are working to provide for their families.

Personally I think this is why the men have rolled out AI so fast - they need to stop women working quickly to turn us all back into trad-wives and stop the "loneliness epidemic" which was only funny when it was women ending up with cats and of course isn't their own fault at all

I'm not sure if it counts as internalised misogyny but all the assumptions that boys/men's stuff is good vs girls/women's stuff. So it's okay for a girl to play with "boys" toys, but not the other way round. It's okay for a woman to be into football, but not for a man to be into netball. This constant assumption that things that have been traditionally female are lesser, or embarassing, or inappropriate in certain settings from books/movies, to sports etc.

I think @FlirtsWithRhinos has it right too that a lot of it is about putting down things that women are interested in as being meaningless or less important.

The one that always annoys m is the way that when both parents work, it doesn't matter what job they both do, the woman's job is ALWAYS perceived as the more flexible/less important and therefore in the case of sick children, she is the one who must manage it. There was interesting research with couples where one was a gp and one a lawyer and this exact dynamic played out time and time again - whether the woman was the doctor or the lawyer, HER job was the one that had to be put aside to care for sick children.

Yes, I didn't spell that out as I thought it was fairly obvious! :) But exactly - It's internalised misogyny when women do it, and in my experience, it happens a LOT. Women look askance at a man who reads "chicklit" or likes netball or are happy for their girls to play with cars but not for their boys to wear a dress.

I agree with @Heggettypeg's analysis here. In all institutions, especially religious ones or other cult-like groups, there are mechanisms of coordination, supervision and delegation that are responsible for the institution’s directional strategy and day-to-day management. These are often hierarchical in nature and, generally very male-oriented. Men thus will jostle for positions in the inner managerial circle; women generally assume more subordinate roles, with the men dispensing or withholding rewards to them.
Middle echelon male leaders in such institutions generally become the enforcers of regulations amongst lower status members, despite them not being demographically or democratically representative of, nor accountable to, rank-and-file members. These middle managers tend to feel responsible for keeping those below them in status in line.
Since not all the men in every total institution can be inside the inner circle (or even part of the middle-managerial layer of authority), many end up feeling disempowered. These men (especially those who feel they’ve been sidelined or are somehow inconsequential to the main institutional objective) assert what little authority they have usually over women. Sometimes they even transfer blame to women, who they may even feel are holding these men back from the very essence of their own lives, or from some important destiny they intended to fulfil. Such disempowered men compensated by treating the women in their orbit with disdain.
This then cascades down to the even more disempowered women who take on a similar role with other women in their orbit.

I do roll my eyes every time somebody quite nonchalantly says in a thread or irl that her husband 'helps with' the baby/children, when he is their father.

Even if you've deliberately and mutually decided between you that one of you will work full-time to earn the money and the other will stay at home to run the house - so it would be quite reasonable to mention if the working person 'helps' the housewife/husband by putting on a load of washing or doing some hoovering when s/he gets home from work - being a parent isn't a 'task' that can slot into a set number of hours and then be ticked off the list.